Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Pollbomb

At publicservice.co.uk (Public Sector & Government News), they're running a weekly poll in which the question is:

Should public sector workers have to pay more to maintain the value of their pensions?

You won't be surprised to hear that the 'No' votes are winning.

Can we round up enough 'Yes' votes to make them think pubic sector workers are all in favour of paying higher pension contributions? It would save the rest of us money, after all. And they deserve our spiteful little tricks.

Join me! Vote for higher pension pay-ins for pubic sector workers. The poll is on the home page, in the right-hand sidebar.

It would seem there are people out there who spend so long in their blogging basements that they a) have lost any understanding of democracy and fair play and b) consider their actions to be revolutionary and even relevant when in fact they are risible and, well, bordering on the just plain silly.

Consider the following which comes from someone who appears to consider themselves to be quite clever:

"All right, all you readers out there. Time for a pollbomb," they write. "At publicservice.co.uk (Public Sector & Government News), they're running a weekly poll in which the question is: Should public sector workers have to pay more to maintain the value of their pensions? You won't be surprised to hear that the 'No' votes are winning. Can we round up enough 'Yes' votes to make them think pubic sector workers are all in favour of paying higher pension contributions? It would save the rest of us money, after all. And they deserve our spiteful little tricks."

Well, at least in one way they are being honest.

When their ‘readers’ vote in our poll they go back to the blog site and enter such comments as: "73% Yes to 27% No at the time of writing. Evil snigger", "79%! cue Sid James' laugh herhyahyahayaaa!", and "81% and counting – truly diabolical!".

Then they mistakenly assume that we have the same values as them and will somehow ‘fix’ the vote for our own ends.

"What is the betting that, if the result isn’t what they want, they’ll declare it null and void on account of us pesky private sector people?", writes one and the web site ‘owner’ replies rather incredulously: "I imagine it will die a quiet death. Especially if we can get the ‘Yes’ vote high enough."

I can assure you the poll won’t die any kind of death (although there will of course be a new poll tomorrow as there is every Wednesday and the results of the current poll will remain on the site).

The actions by such people don’t do anything other than allow them to snigger to themselves (and each other) which is all very satisfying for them, I’m sure. But the whole point of a poll is for people to express their honest opinions which will hopefully be of interest to people who actually do have something worthwhile to say. Bombing polls is ridiculous and pointless, much like the sites that advocate it and relish in it. And the whole premise that there is a public vs private battle like a City vs United thing is nothing short of lame and shows extremely shallow thinking. For those of us who have operated (and still do) in both sectors, we know this is simply not the case.

So to the rest of you out there who do believe in democracy, intelligent debate and discourse, please keep voting and sending in your opinions. We do value them and we will not abandon any poll simply because someone thinks it’s clever to attempt to sabotage it (but sitting at 43-57 at the time of writing they haven't even managed to do that) for the sake of a collective online giggle.

@ RICHI'm sick fed up of paying for ridiculous public sector pensions out of my private pay packet.In fact I couldn't afford the monthly payments required for a pension like that.Their ilk wouldn't last 5 minutes in a private business.Their all good examples of the kind of useless individuals in non jobs that are ruining this country.Their just are not enough of us to pay these people anymore.It's over.

Idle layabouts in the public sector need to improve efficiency or suffer with reduced pension payouts. Go the whole hog and unilaterally change the deal, if they strike, sack 'em, plenty of people out there who will work in nice offices.

They have a new poll now.Which political party will you vote for ?Liebour, Plastic Tory and the global warming scam party, Illiberal Undemocrat.Well they certainly know where their little parasitic interests truly lie don't they ?

I saw the interview this morning, a shame they failed completely to mention policy. I also saw you recent tweeting about the resignation and its rejection. Furthermore, I saw the need for a counter to this, and I saw a quite brilliant one on a comment of Obnoxio the Clown's blog.

Note: this is not mine, it is attributable to "Andy".

Are you suggesting that I, the leader of a party dedicated to individual liberty, freedom of expression and the reversal of the cynical media-driven political dead-end that this country is in, should apologise for speaking out against those I find repugnant? "No" is my answer, "I do not think I should apologise". Rather, I think you should apologise for managing to get through an entire interview with the leader of a political party without asking one question about our policies. You are part of what is wrong with this country, and you demonstrate it with your every word.

Sorry for some reason couldn't find what DK was on about but i did find a running poll about what party you would vote for and when i looked at it the scores were as follows:Labour: 15%Conservative: 54%Libdem: 31%Perhaps not panning out the way the brothers thought it might.I am a public sector worker and I think we should be bloody grateful for the deals we have in place at the moment. You are a public sector worker and tou don't like it?Well F*ck off then.